This is Sigma's new 24-70mm f/2.8
for Sony E-mount. I've been testing it all week,
and today, I'm gonna show you how it compares
to the G Master from Sony and the 28-75mm from Tamron.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and my E-mount brings all the boys to the yard.
So, I've actually got two of these Sigma 24-70s
because I noticed a strange behaviour
in the first model I was testing,
and so I asked for a second unit to compare,
and we'll get into that strange behaviour
in a second. If you follow me on Instagram
or Twitter, you might have already seen
what I'm referring to. But the reason
why I'm mentioning this now is to let you know
that camera number two
has the other Sigma 24-70 mounted on it right now,
and it's shooting me with Face Detect Autofocus,
so you can see how it performs
and what it looks like in this environment.
In my previous videos, that camera was using
the Tamron 28-75. A quick shout-out
to Camera Canada for lending me the Tamron
and the G Master that I used in this comparison.
OK, so let's start with the basics: build quality,
size, weight, and price. The cheapest and smallest
of the bunch is the Tamron 28-75.
It weighs 577 grams, or 1.25 pounds,
with the caps on. It measures 14 cm, or 5.5 inches,
when retracted, and 17 cm, or 6.5 inches,
when fully extended, and costs 880 US dollars.
The Sigma is noticeably heavier at 852 grams,
or 1.9 pounds, but it's actually the same height
as the Tamron when retracted,
but it is about 1.5 cm, or 5/8 of an inch,
thicker across the diameter, though.
It does get taller than the Tamron when extended,
reaching just under 18 cm, or 7 inches,
and it comes in at 1,100 US dollars.
Lastly, the biggest and most expensive
of the bunch is the Sony G Master. It's 922 grams,
or 2 pounds, and reaches nearly 19 cm,
or 7.5 inches, when fully extended.
It's also slightly more girthy than even the Sigma,
and costs a whopping $2,200.
Now, that extra money does buy you
some build quality advantages over the Tamron.
The Tamron, despite being a great value,
does have a rather cheap feeling in the hand.
It's very plasticky, the lens cap is clunky,
the focus ring is not nicely dampened,
there's no function button or selector switches,
and the rings are in the wrong position.
Usually I expect my focus ring to be closest
to the front, but on the Tamron,
the zoom is the thicker ring, and it's more forward.
Now, the G Master has none of these problems,
obviously. But again, it's much bigger and heavier,
so if portability is your number one concern,
the Tamron wins. But where it gets interesting
is that the Sigma doesn't force you to give up
any of the build quality benefits of the G Master,
but only costs half as much.
It has the function button, the selector switch,
and the well-dampened rings
that are in the right order. And just like
the other two lenses, the Sigma is also very well
weather-sealed. That's something that used to be
a weakness of the Sigma Art Lenses,
and it's no longer a concern.
Now, there are two minor differences in the build
between it and the Sony.
First off, both have a zoom lock,
but they operate differently.
The Sony's lock stays on until you click it off,
but the Sigma's can be unlocked
by forcefully turning the zoom ring.
Now, this will come down to personal preference.
Personally, I prefer the Sigma's implementation
because I get the benefits of the lock,
but the speed of not having one when I need
to zoom in a hurry. The other difference
is the direction of the zoom ring.
On the Sony, the Tamron, and even the previous
Sigma lenses, like the 18-35 that I'm shooting
on right now, you turn the zoom ring clockwise
to increase your focal length. But on this new 24-70 Art,
you turn it counter-clockwise to get to 70 mm.
And this is a bit annoying because it means
you can't switch from one of these lenses
to the other using muscle memory,
as they all do something different with their rings.
To conclude this section, though,
the Sigma is the clear winner here,
unless you really need to save those 275 grams.
You get all the benefits of the G Master's build
in a slightly smaller form factor for half the price.
The only case for the Tamron is, again,
if travelling light is the absolute
most important thing. But you should be aware
that you're giving up something else
on the Tamron to save weight when it comes
to that focusing ring. It's nonlinear.
This means that repeatable focus pulls on video
are pretty much impossible on the Tamron,
where both the Sigma and the Sony have
a linear response. But the Sigma beats
the G Master here as well, because not only
is the focus ring smoother, it also has a much longer throw.
I was only getting just over 100° on the Sony,
but closer to 360° on the Sigma.
So, focusing for video is much nicer on the 24-70 Art.
However, this brings us to
that strange behaviour I mentioned earlier
when I was first testing the focus pulls
on the Sigma. I noticed this strange jumping
that was very visible at the edge of the frame.
After trying different focal lengths, apertures,
and even camera bodies, I decided to swap out
the lens, but the problem persisted.
After examining it more closely, though,
I had a theory that it kind of looked like the image
was having its distortion corrected in jumps
rather than smoothly through the focus pull.
So, I tried turning off the distortion correction
in the lens compensation menu, and sure enough,
the problem disappeared. This suggests to me
that we'll need a firmware update on the lens,
or maybe even the camera,
to make this feature work better.
This was on the a7 III, by the way.
But in the meantime, I do not recommend
using distortion compensation when shooting video
with the Sigma 24-70 Art.
This might not even be a concern for many of you,
though, as it's "Off" by default in the menu.
For photos, this isn't an issue, obviously,
and if you really need that distortion correction,
you can always apply in post with
a more controlled result. So, this is definitely a con
toward the Sigma as the Sony and Tamron
don't have this issue, but I haven't found it
to have that much of a practical impact on my images,
and they'll likely be able to fix it with firmware.
Update: I actually received an email from Sigma
after reporting this issue to them,
while I was filming this video,
advising me that the head of service
at Sigma Japan was able to confirm and reproduce
the issue, and is now currently investigating a fix.
So, that's good news! And while we're on the topic
of distortion, these lenses all performed
pretty equally. The G Master is probably
a hair better at 24 mm, but it would appear
that the Sigma is actually a tad wider than the Sony,
so that extra distortion could come down
to the extra field of view you get with a Sigma.
The Tamron has the least distortion on
the wide end, but that's because it doesn't go
as wide. And all three of these lenses
are mostly distortion-free by the time you get
to 32 to 35 mm. Also, jumping back to the focus pulls,
I wanted to see what the focus breathing was like
and I'm pleased to report
that it's very well-controlled on all of these lenses.
If I had to rank them, though, the Tamron is clearly the worst,
and I'd say the Sigma beat out the G Master by a hair.
The Tamron does have an advantage
on the G Master, though, in its close focusing distance.
G Master maintains a constant 38 cm, or 1.25 feet,
minimum focusing distance regardless
of the focal length, but the Tamron has a variable
MFD that gets as close as 19 cm, or 7.5 inches,
on the wide end for a reproduction ratio of 1:3.
Surprisingly, this is one area where
the Sigma deviates from the G Master
and keeps up with the Tamron by also having a variable MFD,
but it gets even closer with 18 cm,
or 7 inches, at 24 mm, allowing it to maintain
the Tamron's 1:3 reproduction but with a wider field of view.
Something that annoyed me about the Tamron
regarding this, however, is the lack of focusing
distance info on the lens. Both the G Master
and the Sigma clearly indicate their minimum
focusing distance right on the lens, but I had
to look it up for the Tamron
because it's not written anywhere on the lens
that I can see. Also, for those that are curious,
the minimum focusing distance is the same for all
of these at 70 mm, which is the 38 cm, or 1.25 feet,
I mentioned earlier.
OK, so let's step away from manual focus
and talk about autofocus.
First of all, they all focus very, very quickly.
We're at a point in time with lenses for Sony
where it's almost splitting hairs.
If you do portrait photography, product, still life,
landscapes, basically anything
but the most intense action, you probably won't
notice a difference in focusing with any
of these lenses. They all do about equally,
whether front-lit, back-lit, stopped down, etc.
In order to even get a notable
and repeatable difference in keeper rate,
I had to do rapid push-pulls at a focused
target shooting on high burst,
basically trying to simulate a subject
running straight at you. This test is probably
irrelevant since I don't think many people buy
a standard zoom for sports or birds,
but in case you were wondering,
here's the keeper rate for fast movement
on the a7 III with these lenses. The Sigma 24-70 came in last
with a 77% keeper rate. The Tamron came in
second with 82%, and the G Master came in first
with 88% usable images.
Now, when it comes to video AF, all three are very, very good.
The Sigma was a bit more choppy when I left
the frame, where the G Master remained smooth.
But all three acquired focus quickly
and held it as I approached the camera.
I also did a bit of a nightmare test
using an extreme backlit shot on S-Log2,
and again, all three performed impressively.
I did find the responsiveness on the Sigma
to be a tad slower than the other two,
but the pulls were very smooth. The G Master was the fastest,
and the Tamron was a very close second,
but the Tamron did struggle here and there.
The Sigma, while a tad slower,
didn't ever lose track of what it was doing,
but the Tamron got stuck a couple times,
but the G Master was pretty much flawless.
The Sigma did surprisingly pull ahead
in my low-light face tracking test.
Here, I would say it performed just as well
as the G Master, and at times acquired
focus sooner. So the Sigma seems to be
the best pick for low-light shooting.
Now, moving on to image quality.
We're gonna be splitting hairs again,
because all of these lenses are very sharp.
In fact, at 4K resolutions, you'd be hard-pressed
to even tell the difference. The only way I was able
to tell is by the slight temperature variations
in their renditions. The G Master was the coolest,
the Sigma a bit warmer and greener,
and the Tamron was somewhere in the middle.
If I was forced to give an analysis, though,
I'd say the Sigma wins in the centre,
the Sony wins on the edges,
and the Tamron just slightly drags behind
in both categories, but not by much at all.
Again, barely noticeable unless really punched in.
The two cases where there was clearly a winner,
however, was in the vignetting
and chromatic aberration comparisons.
The Sigma had the worst vignetting wide open.
I made sure to compare these
with profile corrections turned off,
and found the G Master definitely had
much better control over the vignette, with, again,
the Tamron riding somewhere in the middle.
By the time you get to 35 mm, though,
the playing field starts to level off,
and it's fairly indistinguishable by 50 mm.
However, things flipped when it comes to fringing.
The Tamron was the worst,
but even the G Master showed noticeable fringing
in my tests, where the Sigma was much cleaner.
This disparity evens out a bit when stopped down,
but it's worth noting that the Sigma wins here
at 2.8, since I'm sure many people will be using
this lens wide open. I'm also giving the Sigma
the win in the bokeh department.
Now, this one is obviously subjective,
but I found the Sigma to be smoother, rounder,
and just overall nicer, which surprises me
because I always associated nicer out-of-focus areas
being G Master's thing.
But in the 24-70 category, I prefer the Sigma.
The G Master does still live up to its reputation
when it comes to flare resistance, though.
The Sigma does noticeably better than the Tamron,
but not quite as good as the G Master.
OK, I think that's enough comparisons
of tiny differences between lenses,
because let's face it, this decision is not going
to come down to the character of the flare.
Instead, I see this being about cost and size.
Usually, this is where I would say if you want
the absolute best and money isn't an issue,
get the G Master. But it's not that easy
this time around. While I still think the G Master
is the slightly better lens, the margin is much,
much smaller than it usually is.
So small, in fact, that it might be a mistake
to buy the G Master now that the Sigma exists.
I would say that the Sigma 24-70 Art
is 95% the lens the G Master is, and in some ways,
it's better. Like the longer manual focus throw,
smoother bokeh, reduced fringing,
and shorter close focusing distance.
So, I wouldn't necessarily go out
and sell my G Master to buy the Sigma,
but if you're shopping for a standard zoom
for your Sony right now,
you're getting a terrific value by saving the $1,100
and getting damn near the same lens.
The only reason I'd buy the Sony today
is if I absolutely needed the best autofocus available
and didn't care about the price.
But if you're manually pulling focus,
you should definitely buy the Sigma instead.
So, what about the Tamron?
Because it's cheaper still, at $220 less
than the Sigma, but despite that,
I would suggest paying the extra money
for the Sigma unless size and weight
are the most important factors to you.
And if that's the case, you're still getting
a great lens for a terrific value in the Tamron.
I would not recommend it for manually
pulling focus in video, as it's no good for that,
but it does work well in the autofocus department.
Optically, it might not quite be up
to the standard of the other two lenses,
but it does very well for its price.
It just doesn't do quite as well as a Sigma
does for its price, which is why I'm calling
the Sigma 24-70 Art for Sony E-mount
the best value standard zoom available
for that system. And I put my money
where my mouth is: it's the lens
I'm going to be buying for camera number two,
But that's gonna be it for me,
I hope you found this video entertaining,
or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure to leave it the old thumbs-up,
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful
or entertaining, well, there's no refunds.
Alright... I'm done.